Mass unreason: How dogma normalises public cruelty in Nigeria, By Umar Yakubu

Arendt’s account of Eichmann asks us to consider how ordinary people can distance themselves from the harm they help sustain. In Nigeria’s digital public square, that question is close at hand: When we cheer a killing, excuse a mob or turn away from a victim because of who they are, what are we helping make normal? No fear, grievance or ideology should decide who deserves justice.

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” — Hannah Arendt

In 1961, Hannah Arendt travelled to Jerusalem to report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key organiser of the Nazi deportation of Jews. She expected to encounter a monstrous figure. What struck her instead was the ordinariness of the man in the dock — and the way he relied on routine phrases and references to obedience to distance himself from the consequences of his actions. Arendt later explored this disturbing gap between ordinary conduct and extraordinary harm in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Arendt’s account raises a question that remains urgent: How do people come to accept cruelty while seeing themselves as decent? In Nigeria, that question can be seen in online reactions to extrajudicial killings and other acts of public violence.

A society may achieve measurable signs of progress — rising gross domestic product, rapid technological growth, modern infrastructure and strong human development rankings — yet remain deeply, dangerously sick! Like a human body suffering from a severe autoimmune condition, a civilisation can appear healthy while the damage of its moral systems particularly is toxic.

In anthropology, sociology and social psychology, a “sick society” is one whose norms, institutions and collective behaviours harm citizens or threaten its long-term survival. Rather than collapsing suddenly, it usually declines structurally and psychologically across four areas.

The Four Pillars of Societal Sickness

1. Structural and Anthropological Maladaptation

In Sick Societies, anthropologist Robert Edgerton identifies cultural practices that can threaten a society’s well being. Three examples of these are:

• Chronic internal conflict: Persistent ethnic, religious or political disputes that paralyse collective action and obstruct problem solving;
• Institutionalised despair and alienation: Systems that leave large groups feeling permanently marginalised, while fueling rebellion, apathy or chronic despair;
• Maladaptive resource management: Practices that weaken the economy, degrade the environment or fail to address preventable hunger and treatable disease.

2. The Inverse Burden Transfer: Exporting Pain

A sick society can preserve the appearance of stability by passing unresolved crises down the social ladder. The term “inverse burden transfer” and the framing of this process as “exporting pain” are drawn from eduKateSG’s essay How Society Works: The Sick Society. The burdens shift in three directions:

• From institutions to citizens: Administrative and policing failures become individual burdens, forcing people to cope with institutional breakdown on their own;
• From the powerful to the vulnerable: Economic shocks, security risks and environmental hazards fall disproportionately on poor and marginalised communities;
• From the present to the future: Short-sighted leadership leaves systemic debt, deteriorating infrastructure and ecological damage for future generations.

3. Hyper Conformity to Corrupted Norms

Drawing on Erich Fromm’s sociological framework in The Sane Society, when dysfunction becomes part of daily life, conventional ideas of health and sanity lose their meaning as citizens conform to pathological social norms:

• Pathologising dissent: People who express horror at state failure or mass violence may be dismissed as unstable or subversive, while violent practices are defended.
• Escapism over well being: Anxiety and depression become normalised, while consumerism, substance use and compulsive digital engagement offer ways to avoid confronting shared problems.

4. The Legitimisation of Lovelessness

The final stage of societal decay arrives when a culture’s collective empathy collapses and cruelty, apathy or vengeance become accepted in law or social norms. Grounded in Hannah Arendt’s formulation of the banality of evil and the psychological dynamics of Mass Unreason, this pillar examines how clichés, slogans and unexamined obedience lead ordinary people to endorse or participate in atrocities without seeing themselves as wicked. Empathy becomes confined to one’s own group, while concern for the rights of others is dismissed.

After horrific murders, empathy on social media is often filtered through ethnic, regional, religious or political identities. Online discussions can quickly devolve into identity-based attacks. Before offering sympathy, commenters may judge victims by their names, ethnicities, ideologies, political affiliations or states of origin and then the “but” follows. If a victim is seen as belonging to an “out group,” responses can range from indifference, “they brought it upon themselves”, to subtle or open jubilation.

Mass Unreason and Social Media

In contemporary Nigeria, this fourth pillar, the legitimisation of lovelessness, is visible in digital public squares, particularly Facebook, where I am active. Some opine that X (formerly Twitter) is more toxic. Facebook, with its reach across demographic, regional and socioeconomic lines, offers a window into everyday public attitudes.  Responses to extrajudicial killings, mob justice, kidnapping and murder reveal a society’s moral health. As trust in state protection and formal justice erodes, online spaces can become forums for celebrating, defending or sanitising public cruelty. Reports or videos of extrajudicial killings can draw justifications in comment sections. In this climate of mass unreason, people may ignore the human consequences of the violence they endorse, along with due process and procedural justice.

Selective Empathy and Dehumanisation

After horrific murders, empathy on social media is often filtered through ethnic, regional, religious or political identities. Online discussions can quickly devolve into identity-based attacks. Before offering sympathy, commenters may judge victims by their names, ethnicities, ideologies, political affiliations or states of origin and then the “but” follows. If a victim is seen as belonging to an “out group,” responses can range from indifference, “they brought it upon themselves”, to subtle or open jubilation.

Fear and group loyalty narrow people’s concern for others. Showing compassion to an outsider or calling for a fair trial for someone accused from a rival group, may be framed as an infidelity of one’s own group.

Digital Mobs, Slogans and the Avoidance of Conscience

Social media algorithms can reward emotional intensity, turning comment sections into playgrounds for digital mobs where extreme reactions attract attention and approval.

As Arendt’s work suggests, repetitive language can reduce complex moral questions to familiar scripts. Cheering or celebrating an extrajudicial execution from behind a smartphone screen can offer a sense of group belonging and moral purpose. That response sanitises the act and shields individuals from confronting their role in building a sick society.

Reclaiming Shared Humanity

I have deliberately avoided giving any example from dozens of incidents during which we have severally exhibited our sickness as a society, because some sick minds may easily be distracted from the core message. A society does not become cruel all at once. It changes when a victim’s identity determines whether their life matters. Each justification makes the next act of cruelty easier to accept.

Arendt’s account of Eichmann asks us to consider how ordinary people can distance themselves from the harm they help sustain. In Nigeria’s digital public square, that question is close at hand: When we cheer a killing, excuse a mob or turn away from a victim because of who they are, what are we helping make normal? No fear, grievance or ideology should decide who deserves justice.

Reversing this slide into mass unreason requires a coordinated, multi-pronged intervention led by the state, digital platforms, and civic institutions. First, the Federal Ministry of Justice and state attorneys general must enforce strict statutory accountability by systematically prosecuting instigators of mob justice and extrajudicial killings to dismantle the “cynical realism” that claims formal courts are ineffective.

Second, social media companies, particularly Meta, must recalibrate algorithms that reward emotional intensity, deploy localised moderation in Nigerian languages, and introduce friction prompts to disrupt mob momentum and dehumanising speech on platforms like Facebook.

Finally, religious leaders and civil society organisations must actively de-weaponise faith and group dogma by framing procedural fairness, restraint, and universal empathy as non-negotiable moral duties, ensuring that no fear, grievance, or political ideology is allowed to supersede the rule of law.

Umar Yakubu is the executive director of the Center for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity.